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一个人对某件事了解得越少,他们对自己在该领域的能力就越有信心。
Try to imagine the scene of a bank robbery. A man armed with a 
gun walks into your local branch. He threatens the cashier, ordering her to hand over the money. He seems exceedingly confident. This unknown assailant must be terrifying to her, the other employees , and their clients, except…

试着想象一下银行抢劫的场景:一个带着枪的人走进了你所在地的银行分店。他威胁收银员,命令她交出钱,他看起来非常自信。这个不知名的袭击者对收银员、其他员工和他们的客户来说一定很可怕,除了……
Except the man in question isn’t wearing a mask. His face is completely unobscured, and visible for all to see – including the branch’s security cameras. The man would rob another bank later that same day, utilizing exactly the same method. What on earth made him think he could get away with this? Did he craft some ingenious method to evade modern security systems? Did he crack under the pressure of the situation? Or was he just insanely brazen? The answer may shock you, and placed him firmly in the annals of one of history’s stupidest criminals.
除了他没有戴面具。他的脸毫无遮挡,所有人(包括银行的安全摄像头)都能看到他。当天,这名男子还会利用完全相同的方法抢劫另一家银行。究竟是什么让他认为他可以侥幸逃脱?他是不是巧妙地避开了现代安全系统?他是在形势的压力下崩溃的吗?或者他只是疯狂地厚颜无耻?答案可能会让你震惊,并将他牢牢地置于历史上最愚蠢的罪犯之一的地位。
There are countless stories of witless robbers and less than genius criminals. Wheeler might well have just joined that endless list, and been completely forgotten, were it not for the method that he used and that he was so sure would land him safely on easy street, instead of in the big house. That bank robber will not be forgotten, because the method he used – later discovered by a psychologist who decided to examine whether it hinted at something greater in the human psyche – changed the way we perceive behavior forever. Read on to discover how one idiot made us all smarter.
存在无数关于无脑的强盗和罪犯的故事。惠勒(Wheeler)很可能刚刚加入了这个无尽的名单,并且被完全遗忘,——如果不是因为他使用的方法,他如此确信这个方法会让他安全地降落在舒适的街道上,而不是在这位银行劫匪不会被遗忘,因为他用的方法永久地改变了我们对行为的理解,——这是后来被一位心理学家发现的,他决心检验这是否暗示了人类心理中某些更重要的东西,——结果彻底地改变了我们对行为的看法。继续往下读,了解一个傻瓜如何使我们大家都变得更聪明。


The maskless bandit 无面具的强盗
One morning in 1995, an armed man walked into a bank in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and robbed it at gunpoint. A few hours later, he robbed another. Even more unusual? The fact that the man wore no mask. His face was plainly visible, not only to the people inside but also to security cameras, which captured footage of the robbery. At 5 feet 6 inches tall and 270 pounds, the man – 45-year-old McArthur Wheeler – didn’t exactly disappear into a crowd, and yet he was completely convinced he would never be caught. When cops later showed up on his doorstep, the only thing he could utter was, “But I wore the juice.”
1995年的一个早晨,一名持枪男子走进宾夕法尼亚州匹兹堡市的一家银行,持枪抢劫了这家银行。几个小时后,他又抢劫了另一个。更不寻常的是?那个人没有戴面具的事实。他的脸清晰可见,不仅是对里面的人,而且对拍摄抢劫镜头的安全摄像机也是如此。45岁的麦克阿瑟·惠勒身高5英尺6英寸,体重270磅,他不是那种能够消失在人群中的人。然而,他完全相信自己永远不会被抓住。当警察随后出现在他家门口时,他唯一能说的是,“但我戴了果汁。”

‘But I wore the juice’ “但我戴了果汁”

About three months after the robbery, police broadcast the video surveillance footage taken during the robbery on the local evening news. Not an hour later a tip had come in, identifying the unknown robber as Wheeler, and he was promptly arrested. Even with police officers at his door, he still couldn’t believe they found him. “But I wore the juice,” he told them. “I wore the lemon juice.” If the cops were confused as to what made him rob two banks with no mask before, now they were well and truly lost. What on earth did lemon juice have to do with bank robbery? Plenty, as it happened, or so he thought.
在抢劫案发生大约三个月后,警方在当地晚间新闻中播放了抢劫过程中拍摄的视频监控录像。不到一小时就有提示进来,把这位不明身份的抢劫犯识别为惠勒,他随即被逮捕。即使有警察在他的门口,他仍然不敢相信他们找到了他。“但我戴了果汁,”他告诉他们:“我戴了柠檬汁”。如果说之前警察们搞不清是什么原因让他不戴面具抢劫了两家银行,那么现在他们真的彻底迷惑了。柠檬汁和银行抢劫案到底有什么关系?很多,正如发生的那样,至少他是这么想的。

Invisible ink, invisible face? 看不见的墨水,看不见的脸?

Wheeler had a simple explanation for his actions: he was aware that lemon juice could be used to create an invisible ink that is completely unseen to the naked eye. By the same logic, he reasoned, if he rubbed lemon juice over his face, then it would turn invisible as well. He believed this to be a foolproof plan, though the lemon juice did sting his eyes so badly he could barely see. To others, though, the plan seems moronic beyond words.
惠勒对自己的行为有一个简单的解释:他意识到柠檬汁可以用来制造一种肉眼完全看不到的隐形墨水。根据同样的逻辑,他推断,如果他把柠檬汁涂在脸上,那么它也会变得看不见。他相信这是一个万无一失的计划,尽管柠檬汁确实刺痛了他的眼睛,使他几乎无法视物。然而,对其他人来说,这个计划似乎是无法用语言来形容的低能。

Hidden in plain sight 隐藏在显眼的地方

While his plan didn’t actually make sense, a small part of it did hold true – it turns out that invisible ink does exist. If you use lemon juice – mixed with water – to write anything on a piece of paper, the writing will remain invisible until the paper is heated, in which case it will start showing up. The science behind it is quite simple: the juice is an organic substance that oxidizes and turns brown when heated. It’s not the only possible source for invisible ink, though, as orange juice, milk, onion juice, vinegar and even wine work just as well. Despite his confidence, Wheeler wasn’t about to leave anything to chance…
虽然他的计划实际上行不通,但其中的一小部分确实是真的——事实证明,隐形墨水确实存在。如果你用柠檬汁(与水混合)在纸上写东西,字迹是看不见的,直到纸被加热,在这种情况下字迹才会开始出现。其背后的科学原理非常简单:果汁这种有机物质在加热时会氧化并变成棕色。不过,这并不是隐形墨水的唯一可能来源,橙汁、牛奶、洋葱汁、醋甚至葡萄酒都可以。尽管惠勒很有信心,但他并不打算把任何事留给命运……

An initial test proves successful 初步测试证明成功

The hapless robber wasn’t about to just march into a bank and try to rob it without a dry run first. What was he, stupid? So he made a little experiment at home, rubbing juice on his face and then using a Polaroid camera to snap a selfie. Imagine his astonishment when the photo came out clear. He was really invisible! Another theory, however, was that he was just as bad at taking photos as he was at a life of crime, and just used the camera wrong or pointed it away from his face.
这位倒霉的劫匪不会在没有事先演练的情况下就冲进银行试图抢劫。难道他会是笨蛋吗?所以他在家里做了一个小实验,把果汁抹在脸上,然后用宝丽来相机拍了一张自拍。想象一下当照片清晰地拍出来时他的惊讶。他真的是隐形的!然而另一种解释是,他在拍照方面和他的犯罪生涯一样糟糕,他只是用错了相机,或者把相机偏离了他的脸。

A psychologist takes interest 一位心理学家产生了兴趣

Wheeler went to jail, and to any history books wishing to depict stupid criminals, but his story would have a more lasting impact – not on crime but in social psychology. It was precisely in one of those history books that his story was discovered by Cornell psychology professor David Dunning, who took to wondering whether a broader, more universal theme could be gleaned from the case, not necessarily regarding criminals but people in general. What his research turned up was… that he was absolutely right.
惠勒进了监狱,以及进了任何想要描述愚蠢的罪犯的历史书,但他的故事将产生更持久的影响——不是在犯罪方面,而是在社会心理学方面。正是在这样的一本历史书中,康奈尔大学心理学教授大卫 · 邓宁发现了他的故事。他开始思考是否可以从这个案例中收集到一个更广泛、更普遍的主题,不一定是针对罪犯,而是针对一般人。他的研究结果是……他是完全正确的。

‘Unskilled and unaware of it’ “不熟练和不知道它”

Dunning, along with graduate student Justin Kruger, found a link between how much a person knows about a certain task – or more to the point, how much they don’t know – and their confidence in their ability to carry it out well. The correlation was inverse – the less a person knew about something, the more confident they were of their abilities in that area. Thus, in an article titled “Unskilled and unaware of it,” the Dunning-Kruger effect was born. We can find examples all around us, both in popular culture and real life…
邓宁和研究生贾斯汀·克鲁格发现,在一个人对某项任务知道多少——或者更切题地说,不知道多少——和他们能把这项任务执行好的信心之间存在关联。这种相关性是相反的——一个人对某件事了解得越少,他们对自己在该领域的能力就越有信心。因此,在一篇题为《不熟练和不知道它》的文章中,邓宁-克鲁格效应诞生了。我们可以在我们身边到处找到这样的例子,无论是在流行文化中还是在现实生活中……

Samuel Porter’s one million dollar bill 塞缪尔·波特的百万美元钞票

Fifteen years after Wheeler’s case, another stupid criminal raised his head in Pittsburgh (is it something in the water?). A man named Samuel Porter went into a grocery store and handed the cashier a one million dollar bill. As she refused to take it, and a manager confiscated it, Porter flew into a rage and began throwing things around. He was later charged with criminal mischief and forgery. The bill, authorities believed, may have come from a Dallas ministry, which passed out religious pamphlets resembling such a bill. The largest denomination in circulation? $100.
惠勒案发生15年后,另一个愚蠢的罪犯抬起了头,也是在匹兹堡(难道是水中有什么东西吗?)。一个名叫塞缪尔·波特的人走进一家杂货店,递给收银员一张100万美元的钞票。由于她拒绝接受,而经理没收了它,波特勃然大怒,开始乱扔东西。后来,他被指控犯有毁损和伪造罪。当局认为,这张钞票可能来自达拉斯的一个部门,该部门分发了好像这样一项钞票的宗教小册子。流通中最大的面额是多少?100美元。

‘She bangs, she bangs!’  怦然心动,怦然心动

Many people today probably don’t remember the name William Hung, but if they were asked what the worst singer they have ever heard was, they’ll know. “I really like music and I’d like to make music my living,” he revealed during his American Idol audition, and then went on to butcher Ricky Martin’s She Bangs before the incredulous judges. Even more incredulous later was Hung himself, who mentioned he had no training in music, as if that explained what they had just heard. At least William took it in stride, unlike this next entry…
今天很多人可能不记得孔庆翔这个名字,但如果问他们听过的最烂的歌手是谁,他们就知道了。“我真的很喜欢音乐,我想以音乐为生,”他在参加美国偶像试镜时透露,然后在表示怀疑的评委面前,把瑞奇·马丁的《怦然心动》演砸了。对此更难以置信的是孔庆翔自己,他提到自己没有受过音乐训练,好像这就解释了他们刚刚听到的。至少孔庆翔泰然处之,不像下一个条目……

Mary Roach makes the earth move 玛丽·罗奇让地球移动

Fellow American Idol contestant Mary Roach opened her audition by explaining she would change her name to Mary Guilbeaux if she made it past the audition phase because “it has more star quality,” and it only went downhill from there. She proceeded to ramble a while before singing possibly the worst rendition of a song since… Well, since William Hung. Asked by judge Simon Cowell how she thought she did, she said, “Not too shabby” and gave herself an eight. Someone else on television, this time fictional, had a sense of self-worth just as inflated.
《美国偶像》的另一位选手玛丽·罗奇在开始试镜时解释说,如果她通过了初选,她就会把自己的名字改成玛丽·吉尔博,因为“它更有星味”,然后事情从那里开始就每况愈下。她继续漫谈了一会儿,然后唱了一首可能是自……嗯,自孔庆翔以来最糟糕的演奏。当评委西蒙 · 考威尔问她觉得自己表现如何时,她说,“不太寒酸”,给自己打了8分。电视上的另一个人,这次是虚构的,有着同样膨胀的自我价值感。译注:这里指的是下一段中的迈克尔·斯科特,他是电视节目中的虚构人物。

‘Don’t ever, for any reason, do anything…’ “永远不要因为任何原因,做任何事……”

Perhaps the most notable example of the Dunning-Kruger effect is The Office’s Michael Scott, the paper company’s boss, who’s unimaginably stupid but doesn’t have the first inkling that he is. When asked to sum up his philosophy, he said, “Don’t ever, for any reason, do anything, to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you’ve been, ever, for any reason whatsoever.” Couldn’t have said it better ourselves. But why is it so funny?
也许邓宁-克鲁格效应最显著的例子是“那家办公室”(The Office)的迈克尔·斯科特,这家造纸公司的老板,他愚蠢得令人难以想象,却对此毫无所知。当被要求总结他的哲学时,他说:“永远不要因为任何理由,做任何事,对任何人,因为任何理由,永远不要,无论什么,无论哪里,无论谁,无论你和谁在一起,无论你要去哪里,无论你去过哪里,永远不要,因为任何原因。”我们自己都无法说得更好。但这为什么这么好笑呢?

Why we laugh 我们为什么笑?

The reason stupid people who don’t know they’re stupid are so funny is rooted in the German language, and one of its more brilliant phrases. We’ve all heard of “schadenfreude” – or glee derived from someone else’s misfortune – but have you heard of “fremdscham”? That delightful German saying describes secondhand embarrassment, meaning feeling shame at someone else’s actions. That feeling – often called the “cringe factor” – has been used numerous time to get a laugh out of us recently, but the basic premise of Dunning and Kruger has existed for ages. Don’t believe us? Read on.
愚蠢的人不自知愚蠢为什么如此有趣,原因根植于德语,以及它的一个让人印象更深的短语。我们都听说过"schadenfreude",——即对别人的厄运幸灾乐祸,——但你听说过"fremdscham"吗?这句令人愉快的德国谚语描述的是间接的尴尬,意思是对别人的行为感到羞愧。这种感觉——经常被称为“尴尬因素”——最近已经无数次地让我们发笑,但邓宁和克鲁格的基本前提已经存在了很久。不相信我们?继续读下去。

Wise words from the past 来自过去的至理名言

Similar or related ideas have been expressed in famous texts written way back. How far back? Biblically far back. The Book of Proverbs told us, “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise,” meaning that if you’re stupid but keep your mouth shut, no one’ll find out. William Shakespeare, meanwhile, wrote, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool” while Charles Darwin said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Another study showed that’s true for more than just laypeople…
类似的或相关的想法已经在很久以前的著名文章中表达过。有多远?像圣经那么远。《箴言》告诉我们,“即使是一个傻瓜,当他保持平静的时候,也被认为是聪明的”,意思是如果你是愚蠢的,但闭上你的嘴,没人会发现的。同时,威廉·莎士比亚写道:“愚者自以为聪明,智者却知道自己是个傻瓜”,而查尔斯·达尔文则说:“无知比知识更常带来自信。”另一项研究表明,这不仅适用于普通人……

Checkmating yourself 将死自己

At this point, you might think us average joes would fall prey to that psychological fallacy, but no people who are good at what they do would. Well… Take chess, for instance, which has a mathematical rating system that provides players with precise and accurate numerical information making up a player’s “strength,” or ability. These ratings are public knowledge. Players on major tournaments were then polled on whether their rating reflected their true strength. Seventy-five percent of them thought it didn’t. Some of them had to have been wrong.
现在,你可能会认为我们这些普通人会成为这种心理谬论的牺牲品,但擅长自己所做的事的人不会。嗯……以国际象棋为例,它有一个数学评级系统,为棋手提供精确的数字信息,这构成了一个棋手的“力量”,或者能力。这些评级是众所周知的。然后,大型锦标赛的选手们接受了关于他们的评级是否反映了他们真正实力的调查。75%的人认为不是这样。其中一些人肯定是错的。

The search for idiots continues 寻找白痴的行动仍在继续

Dunning and Kruger, meanwhile, were not content with looking at criminals – possibly because people convicted of crimes are, on average, less intelligent than those who are not – so they examined their own college students. Surely, they reasoned, if college students were just as guilty of the illusion of confidence, then everyone else is also susceptible. They examined sense of humor, knowledge of grammar and logical reasoning, and found… that no matter the topic, the less we know about it, the more confident we are, up to a point. But what’s that tipping point?
与此同时,邓宁和克鲁格并不满足于只看罪犯——这可能是因为被判有罪的人平均来说,比那些不聪明的人更不聪明——所以他们调查了自己大学的学生。当然,他们的理由是,如果大学生对自信的幻觉同样感到内疚,那么其他所有人也都容易受到影响。他们考察了幽默感、语法知识和逻辑推理,发现……无论是什么话题,我们对它了解得越少,我们就越有信心,——直到某个临界点。但这个临界点是什么呢?

A fine line 一条细线

Dunning and Kruger found the tipping point was somewhat ironically knowing just enough about the topic in question to skew our perception of our knowledge of it, but not too much. If we know just a little about something, it tends to overinflate our confidence. One study, for example, found that 80 percent of drivers believed they’re above average at driving. Let that sink in for a moment. Other findings in the Dunning-Kruger study, however, were surprising…
邓宁和克鲁格发现,具有讽刺意味的是,临界点是对所讨论的主题的了解刚好足以扭曲我们对它的认知,但又不是太多。如果我们对某件事只知道一点点,这往往会倾向于过度膨胀我们的信心。例如,一项研究发现,80%的司机认为他们的驾驶水平高于平均水平。让我们仔细想一会,这究竟意味着什么。然而,邓宁和克鲁格研究中的其他发现令人惊讶……

Higher intelligence, lower confidence 智力越高,信心越低

Finding that the students who scored lowest on their tests had the most exaggerated notion of how well they did was not the least bit shocking… but realizing the magnitude of the trend was: students with the lowest performance estimated their skills were superior to those of 67 percent of other students. The flip side was just as surprising: students who scored highest had slightly underestimated their own performance relative to their fellow students, echoing the Harry Potter series’ Hermione Granger. It’s not modesty – it’s knowing enough to realize how little you know – and it’s not just students. For example, remember the last time you were sick? Because as it turns out…
发现那些在考试中得分最低的学生对自己的表现有最夸大的看法,这一点都不令人震惊……但令人震惊的是意识到这个趋势的幅度之大:表现最差的学生估计他们的技能优于67%的其他学生。相反的一面也同样令人惊讶:得分最高的学生会稍微低估自己相对于其他同学的表现,就像《哈利·波特》系列中的赫敏·格兰杰。这不是谦虚——而是知道的足够多,所以明白自己知道的很少——这也不仅仅是关于学生。例如,记得上次你生病的时候吗?因为事实证明……

The dangers of self diagnosis自我诊断的危险

You had a sore throat, or a stuffy nose, or maybe something more serious like stomach ache and nausea. These days, whenever that happens, we immediately Google our symptoms in one of the countless online medical databases. And we really shouldn’t. The limitless data found online fools us into thinking we know more than we do, and we always end up discovering we have some kind of terrible illness, because our symptoms supposedly match up. Naturally, we just have a virus, or a cold, and the internet gave us just enough information to trip us up.
你有喉咙痛,或鼻塞,或更严重的像胃痛和恶心。如今,每当这种情况发生时,我们都会立即在无数的在线医疗数据库中搜索自己的症状。我们真的不应该。在网上发现的无限数据让我们误以为我们知道的比我们知道的还多,我们总是最终发现我们患上了某种可怕的疾病,因为我们的症状据说是匹配的。自然地,我们只是得了病毒,或者感冒,而互联网给了我们足够多的信息,让我们犯错。

Some well-deserved recognition 一些当之无愧的认可

Our weird rashes aside, Dunning and Kruger were lauded by the general public for their contribution to understanding the human psyche, but also won a very unusual accolade: an Ig Nobel Prize. Playing off of the real Nobel Prizes and the word “ignoble,” the prize committee gives out awards for trivial scientific or unusual achievements in scientific research. The two were honored in 2000 with the Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology for their research. No mean feat, as other scientists won for achieving the magnetic levitation of a frog!
除了我们奇怪的皮疹,邓宁和克鲁格因为他们对理解人类心灵的贡献而受到公众的称赞,但也获得了一个非常不寻常的荣誉:搞笑诺贝尔奖。作为真正的诺贝尔奖和“ignoble”(不光彩的)这个词的恶搞,这个奖的委员会为科研中琐碎的或不寻常的科学成就发奖。邓宁和克鲁格两人因其研究成果于2000年获得了搞笑诺贝尔心理学奖。这可不是一项轻而易举的成就,因为其他科学家是因为磁悬浮青蛙获奖的!
译注因为磁悬浮青蛙获得2000年搞笑诺贝尔奖的正是不久前(2020年10月)与本文译者袁岚峰对话的安德烈·盖姆,他还因为制备二维材料石墨烯获得了2010年诺贝尔物理学奖。对话视频与文字参见袁岚峰对话诺奖得主安德烈·盖姆(上)用胶带撕出石墨烯,诺奖得主:我们的想象不该被限制》《袁岚峰对话诺奖得主安德烈·盖姆(下)对俄罗斯感情复杂,中国应用科学世界第一》】

What Wheeler can teach us 惠勒能教给我们什么

We’ve seen there’s endless potential for hilarity in the actions of real people like McArthur Wheeler or fictional ones like Michael Scott, whose obliviousness just screams to high heaven. Laughing, we believe, would be missing the point. As self diagnosing and Dunning and Kruger have shown us, we can all fall victim to this effect. In fact, the less likely we believe it is to happen, the likelier it is to actually happen. Consider, finally, these words from Chinese philosopher Confucius, who said, “Real knowledge is knowing the extent of one’s ignorance.”
我们已经看到,无论是像麦克阿瑟·惠勒这样的真实人物,还是像迈克尔·斯科特这样的虚构人物,他们的行为都有无限的欢乐潜力,他们的健忘直上云霄。我们认为,嘲笑会是错失要点。正如自我诊断和邓宁与克鲁格向我们展示的那样,我们都可能成为这种效应的上当者。事实上,我们越不相信它会发生,它就越有可能真的发生。最后,考虑一下中国哲学家孔子的话,他说:“知之为知之,不知为不知,是知也。”【译注:英文原文的直译是:“真正的知识是,了解自己无知的限度。”
参考文献:
背景简介:文章2018年6月26日发表于 kiwireport(https://www.kiwireport.com/heres-man-rubbed-lemon-juice-face-rob-bank/),风云之声翻译。
责任编辑杨娜
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